- [Presenter] Some games were just made to give and give and give. Today we really wanna
talk about some of those. Hi folks, it's Falcon
and today on Gameranx, 10 games that spoiled us. Starting off with number 10,
it's Red Dead Redemption 2. We've said a lot about
Red Dead 2 over the years. I mean a lot, and for good reason. It's an exemplary game
that was amazing back when it came out, but actually
seems even more impressive to me now than back then. In terms of open world design, they set the bar really
high because arguably even now after the original came out I'm not sure an open world
game has been able to match in terms of detail and world design. Yeah, there's open world
games that people like more or maybe have more fun
with, but the attention to detail in Red Dead 2
is just beyond comparison. Nothing else has matched it. There's just so much going
on at any given point. So many little details that another developer
wouldn't even bother with. And so many little secrets
and Easter eggs to discover, all of which of the
highest absolute quality. There's a reason games
like Cyberpunk 2077 got so much heat when they first came out. People were comparing the open world of that game to Red Dead 2
or Grand Theft Auto Five. And regardless about how you
feel about any of it, Cyberpunk or any Rockstar game, clearly
Cyberpunk came up short. It just didn't have the living breathing world that Rockstar
has managed to create. And it's actually kind
of peculiar to think about given how alive Witcher 3 feels. But I have some inklings. It actually has to do with deciding they were going
to make a first person game. In all honesty, putting
you inside the head of the main character
necessitates higher expectations. And well, CD Projekt Red isn't Rockstar and Red Dead 2 is the absolute height of what they've been able to create. It's so impressive that it's
hard to imagine something as massive in Grand Theft
6, being able to match it. And we're talking about a world where there's
very little technology. I'm not so sure a modern
world where the possibilities are technically much more vast is going to be able to match the detail
and realism of that world. I would of course love to be proven wrong but a lot of open world
games have come out after RDR2 and none of them have been as meticulously detailed
or feel as real as it does. And number nine is Kirby
and The Forgotten Land. It might seem like an odd
entry for a list like this. Kirby Games are, if anything,
pretty traditional games and they rarely exceed expectations. Those expectations are high and these games almost always meet them. They're very good games,
but they're very old school by nature, and they aren't
really spoiling anyone with their cutting edge
gameplay or amazing graphics. What they are spoiling us with is something that's
becoming more and more rare with new games that, well,
they're relatively bug free. Generally, there's no day
one patch with Kirby Games and with Kirby and The
Forgotten Land, there wasn't, in fact probably the most
shocking thing of all, this game has never been patched. It is version 1.0 and like this is a world where day one patches
aren't just the norm. They're basically the expectation. It seems like every other
game comes out plagued with glitches and performance issues. Kirby, the Forgotten
Land is a true anomaly. I know, it's kind of ridiculous that we consider a game spoiling us now just for being in a state
that most games should be in when they release, you
know, a finished product. But also that's kind of
where we are in games. It's not like you or me have a choice in
when they release games. Pretty much everything gets patched and that's actually not a bad thing. Patches I think are good. I think it's good
overall that they're able to fix things after release. It does provide them with the opportunity to
launch things incomplete. But still, I would rather the
ability to be there than not. But to call this unusual for Kirby and the Forgotten Land to launch at 1.0 and stay at 1.0, it
kind of almost feels wrong. Like the devs must have
abandoned the game. It's just a mess. But no, Kirby is fine. (upbeat music) It's not perfect in terms of performance but it's a Switch game. So I mean, I don't know
what anybody really expects out of a Switch game. Certainly not 1080p, 60 frames
per second on a newer title. Now, like I said I will take a patched game
over one that's forever broken. Cyberpunk 2077, No Man's Sky. These are good games now,
and they didn't launch in a state that I would
consider purely good. But I mean, wow, Kirby and the Forgotten Land,
man, good job devs. And number eight is Skyrim. Now, unlike RDR, Skyrim
doesn't have the best graphics and unlike Kirby, wow, I don't
think we need to say anything about the game being finished or bug free. I don't think any Bethesda
game will ever be finished and bug free at least as long as they stay on the damn Creation engine. But that's not why we talk about Skyrim. And in truth, it's not
even just the base game. Why we talk about Skyrim, the thing that really spoils us
is the amazing support that game's received from the community. The massive unofficial fan
patches to graphics mods to total conversions that
completely changed the game. Skyrim is one of the best games to own on PC for the mods alone. It's easy to give credit to the community for being so dedicated to the game that they
created all these mods in the first place. But Bethesda actually kind of deserves some pretty major kudos
for making modding possible and supporting the modding community. And even that isn't perfect. There have been some pretty big missteps in terms of Bethesda and mods. I mean, they've always been
welcoming of it with open hands just not always for the best reasons like when they tried to
monetize fan mods on consoles. But in general, just the enthusiasm over the modding community that the studio shows is a
positive, more than a negative. They created the toolkit
that allows the game to be easily modified and made
it available to everybody. The studio didn't have to do that and most other developers
don't, but they did. And that makes Skyrim a much better game 'cause they know where
its bread and butter is in that mod community. Starfield just came out. And even though the editing tools
haven't been officially released by Bethesda, the game is
already getting a ton of mods. And in the long run, it could
be an even better platform for modding than Skyrim was. So few games allow modding,
like as much credit as Rockstar deserves for other reasons. They constantly cause problems
for their modding community. So when a developer
completely embraces it the way that Bethesda has, it can
feel like they're spoiling us. And number seven is Baldur's Gate 3. This is one massive
game, but what makes it so unique is how interactive it is. With quests that can go in
wildly divergent directions depending on how you play 'em,
there are certain elements of this game that a fraction of a fraction of the player base is
ever even going to see. And in defiance of most
other games that try to get players to experience
as much content as possible, Larian, the developers of
the game don't seem to mind that very few people are
ever gonna see those things. What makes a truly great RPG is the fact that those scenes are in the game at all. A lot of other developers
use player metrics to decide what to focus
on and what to cut out. And that's made for a lot
of games where it feels like your choices don't really matter. But Baldur's Gate 3 bucks
that trend entirely. - To your very good health. - [Narrator] You perceive a
faint hint of Klauthgrass, a herb that is said to elicit the truth. Jaheira smiles at you, knowingly. - It doesn't spoil the taste. If that's what you're wondering. - [Presenter] What's even more impressive about it is the fidelity of everything. Like every character is voiced and it's extremely
impressive how even the most inconsequential dialogue
has been motion captured. It's not just a bunch
of generic hand motions. They actually look like they took the time
to voice every line but also animate every
line, which is not only beyond what you see in
computer RPGs in general but outside of very linear
cinematic games of any kind. There's an attention to detail in this game that just
trounces other games. It's not perfect. It's got its fair share of bugs. And the last act is seen as
disappointing to some people although I'm not so
sure I agree with them. But the overall package is
just, it's so good that a lot of people fear we won't get
another RPG that's as good as this one for a pretty long time. And they're, I don't know, maybe, right? It might also just be
unnecessary hand wringing. I don't know. You almost never see games
that are a hardcore RPG with AAA production
levels from top to bottom. You get one or the other, never both. And Baldur's Gate 3 is both. And number six is Stardew Valley, compared to a lot of
other games on this list, it's a kind of a more modest success. It's a Harvest Moon spiritual
successor, primarily made by one guy named Eric Barone,
also known as ConcernedApe. He did everything. He programmed it, created the
art, music, the whole thing. It's all one person, Eric Barone. That's a huge accomplishment on its own. But what's especially impressive is that the game is actually
really, really good. And yes, I characterized its success as maybe a little more modest
than the previous games but in its own right, it's
still a massive success. To me, what makes it feel like this game spoiled us
isn't in its initial release but the fairly shocking
amount of post launch content. This game along with other indie darlings like Terraria has really set a new bar for indie game updates. The prevailing knowledge before games like this was to release a game, patch it up to a decent
state, then move on. It was considered kind of a waste to continuously update a game 'cause in terms of sales, like
that's diminishing returns only subscription based games
or ones with constant DLC and microtransactions would
get that kind of support. Stardew, and games like
it showed that a game even a single player
one could be profitable for years at the initial release date just by releasing a steady stream of updates which improve the game. Why, because it continually
gets new people interested in it 'cause there's always news about it. (calm music) Obviously if every single person on the face of the Earth bought the game, it probably wouldn't continue
to keep the game profitable. But I don't even know if
it would be important. But the update history on this
game just goes on forever. It has seen so many
upgrades and free edition. It almost feels like a different game now. The amount of new stuff they've added over the years is just
absolutely staggering. And so many games just nickel and dime us for every little thing. It's really refreshing
to see a game come along where you get nearly a sequel's worth of content for free and
it keeps the game alive in a way that doesn't come
off as predatory or greedy. At number five is Marvel's Spider-Man. By 2018, we knew what to
expect with superhero games. It was just understood. If you wanted costumes you were just gonna have to pay for 'em. Every open world game out
there was just charging for cosmetics up to wazoo at the time. You get maybe three or four
free ones as a pittance but everything else you were paying for. Everyone rags on the Avengers
game for this sort of thing. But basically every game was doing it. Everybody wants to play
dress up with the superheroes so a lot of games just knew that they could get you to pay for it. So when Marvel Spider-Man came out it felt like they were really spoiling us by giving us so many costumes
for free just in the game. There wasn't a currency you had to earn there wasn't a battle
pass you had to grind. You just got 'em from tokens
that you got from gameplay like playing the game. Just that, doesn't take you hundreds of hours of grinding. Hell, it doesn't even really
take that long, period, and it feels really wrong. That's how messed up our
brains were at the time. When a game would show you
this big list of unlockables you'd be like, hmm, well I'm locked out of a lot of this 'cause
I'm not gonna buy it. And that's not how this game is. And even though that's
how everything should work it felt like the game was spoiling us. This is actually one aspect of the gaming industry
that has improved a lot over the last few years. A lot of single player games
are just a lot more generous with the costumes than they
were in the previous generation. And it's probably all
because of Spider-Man. I don't have evidence to back that up but this is such a well loved game that was hugely successful
and very profitable. It makes sense to copy their formula - [Character 1] One for the kids. Thanks, they adore you. - [Presenter] And number
four is Jak and Daxter, it might sound a little
random, but stick with me here. Back at the PS1, PS2 era, loading screens were a fact of life. Hell, even now with SSDs and infinitely faster loading
and streaming abilities the loading screen is still fairly common. What made the original Jak and Daxter so unique is that it was
devoid of loading screens. After the initial startup, you'd never see another loading
screen for the entire game. Things like portals were instantaneous. You could seamlessly run from the final area of
the game, the very start and you'd never lose
control of your character. Naughty Dog has always been known for their technical prowess. Famously, they pushed the
original PlayStation hardware further than they were
supposed to be allowed to. And this is just one more example of that. GTA 3 and Vice City those still had loading
screens between islands. At the time, streaming was
still a really new concept. These days, nearly every game streams
content dynamically depending on the circumstances, but that hasn't eliminated
loading or anything. And this is a 20 year old game. It came out when loading was, I mean, more normal than it is now. It must've been a shock for people who had this
as their first game like going to any other game
had to have been infuriating. Loading times are a lot better now than they used to be, to be fair. It's like night and day
compared to the old PS2 days. But Jak and Daxter still has a lot of modern games beat
in how seamless it is. And number three is Hollow Knight. In a world where AAA
games sell for 70 bucks and the smallest indie games sell for 30, Hollow Knight's humble
14.99 price tag is a steal. When I bought this game back
in 2017, the day it came out it wasn't even on Steam's front page. It had zero reviews, and
I saw that $15 price tag and the animation. I thought, ah, three hour game, kind of an indie metroid style game. And I was not correct about that. I was correct that it was cool. I identified that from the
video content streaming off the page. But wow, it's one of the
best metroidvanias out there. It stands toe to toe
with some of the greats like Castlevania: Symphony of
the Night and Super Metroid. In pure content terms,
the game is so much bigger than its contemporaries. It can take 30 hours, 30 fricking hours, and that's before all
the completely free DLC, Hollow Knight does everything you want in an exploration action game, but with more, like there's
more bosses, bigger areas, better secrets than almost
any of its competitors and it's cheaper than your
average Call of Duty skin bundle. It's a game that set the new bar for quality for these types of games and not one that I really
think anybody has beaten since. (dramatic music) (monster grunting) And number two is The Legend
of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, ultra hand, it's so
versatile and powerful. It's just a next gen power
that feels light years ahead of what most other games are doing. And it's on the fricking
Switch, like it feels like there's gonna have to be a
catch the first time you use it. Like it's only gonna
work on certain things. It only attaches to certain surfaces. Yeah, that's what you're thinking. It can't possibly be all encompassing in the way that they're advertising it and whew, to call this
thing a game changer is an understatement. It is a remarkable tool and it completely changes how
players approach the game. Like there are people who
say that Tears of the Kingdom is too samey with Breath of the Wild. And I think that those
are the people who just have not gotten deep
enough into the mechanics of Tears of the Kingdom yet to truly understand why the game exists. I don't know if I even can explain it. It's a power you get right
at the start of the game. You can pick up objects
and glue 'em together. That's the gist of it. But that is not a adequate
explanation for it. Like you can stick trees
together to cross a gap. You can build a makeshift vehicle. The construction possibilities in this game are absolutely nuts. And people have made the most
insane crap with this thing. And like, okay, so there's other games
with building mechanics but they have never been
seamless in the way that this is. In most games, you're forced into an alternate menu to do anything like building and combining. But here you grab an object slap it against another
object, and that's it. It's extremely intuitive and easy to do, how they got all these physics
effects to work like this on the Switch, it feels like
black magic, the ultra hand, it's one of these things that
just feels light years ahead of everything else out there. And finally at number one is P.T. Now, it feels bizarre to say this but there are so many
people that played P.T., the playable teaser that Konami put out in 2014 exclusively on the PlayStation and we were forever spoiled
for other horror games. This single little teaser
meant to get everybody excited about a Silent Hill game
that never came out, ended up being one of the most influential
horror games of all time. In fact, you know what? It's one of the best pieces
of horror media of all time. It's so genuinely scary in a way that few horror
games or really, again, all horror media ever actually is. And in a good way, like there
are some things that scare me that I'm like, all right, cool,
I didn't really need that. But P.T. does it in a way that is unique and it does so with this
relatively basic setup that results in some really amazing things. The game has since been de-listed and it's kind of hard to play. So it's also achieved a weird
kind of folklore status. So many games have tried to be P.T. but nothing's really managed to do it. It's a testament to how brilliant Kojima
and the various designers, artists and programmers
were that worked on P.T. (girl screaming) And that's all for today,
leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. If you like this video, click like. If you're not subscribing,
now's a great time to do so, we upload brand new videos
every day of the week. The best way to see them first
of course is subscription so click subscribe. Don't forget to enable notifications. And as always, thank you very
much for watching this video. I'm Falcon, you can follow me
on Twitter at Falcon The Hero. We'll see you next time
right here on Gameranx.
